Biased Blow-By-Blow - Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2014

Introduction

Sure, there are other real-time online feeds of great bike races, but they’re too mainstream, too shackled by the principles of fair, balanced, non-profane, and dead-serious reporting.  This report, being filed by an unpaid blogger with strong opinions, may be just the thing for you if you’re tired of commentators holding, or biting, their tongues.

Biased Blow-By-Blow - Liège-Bastogne-Liège

So, as I join the race they've got about 65km (40 miles) to go.  There's a breakaway with a little under five minutes on the peloton.  Europcar is on the front of the peloton chasing, probably working for Thomas Voeckler, who isn't a bad rider and, more importantly, looks just a little bit like a young Robin Williams.  Look closely at his face and you'll see what I mean.

The break, of course, is doomed, and not just because it's a bunch of nobodies.  I'll name them anyway because there isn't much else to report right now. You've got Pirmin Lang, riding for IAM Cycling, which I'm pretty sure is sponsored by a dog food company here in the US.  Speaking of pets, this is sad:  my cat is so old she's reluctant to try to jump up on my lap as I sit here at the computer.  Say, that reminds me ... is Jens Voigt in this race?  Nope ... though he'd have had a better shot than Andy Schleck who, true to form, has already dropped out.  (This happened earlier; I read it in another live feed.  If you think that's cheating, consider that from a journalistic perspective it's the most professional thing I do.)

While I'm on the subject of who isn't here, Chris Froome was supposed to ride Liège-Bastogne-Liège today, but announced yesterday that he would not be riding, due to a yeast infection.  I'm kind of relieved, actually.  I had no problem with Bradley Wiggins riding Paris-Roubaix a couple weeks back, because (other than being on Team Sky) he's a slightly credible rider, and anyway he wasn't a favorite and I knew he wouldn't win (though he did ride well).  But with Froome, nothing is impossible.  His greatest talent as an athlete is how beautifully he responds to drugs.  I mean, take a guy like Vaughters.  His hematocrit was naturally high, meaning there was only so much that EPO could do for him.  But Froome went from a nobody to dominating the Tour de France without seeming to break a sweat, so I wouldn't be surprised if he could win just about any race on the calendar as long as he gets enough of whatever he's getting.  He could probably win a marathon, or a pro wrestling match, or swim across the English Channel.  And I hate to see him win, not just because he's a cheating scumbag, but because he makes the race boring by accidentally dropping everybody.

Michael Koch, the grandson of the former NYC mayor, is in the break for Cannondale.  Jacobus Venter is there, riding for MTN- Qhubeka.  Does that team make you nervous?  Well, you had Gerald Ciolek on that team winning Milan-San Remo last year, but that's not what I'm talking about.  It's "Qhubeka."  Normally when we see a "Q" that is not followed immediately by a "u," we're looking at an extremist mideastern terrorist cell.  So I think that company, which makes gluten-free construction materials, should consider a spelling modification if it's to sell better in western markets.  By the way, I've guessed at some of the details of this paragraph.  If I get around to it I'll have my fact-checker go through it.

An online correspondent, hearing of this breakaway, writes in, "I'd totally be there if I was racing!"  This isn't as outlandish as it sounds, because this correspondent is a retired pro.  I replied, "In the break? I don't think so. They'd never let a rider of your caliber get a gap."  By the way, if you e-mail me, you too can participate in this report.  (Note:  if you're reading this after the race has ended, you are too late.)

The gap is down to 2:40 so I better finish profiling these poor doomed breakaway riders.  First, a final comment on Jacobus Venter:  his given name was Jacob, but that didn't sound Roman and badass enough for him, so he applied the "-us" himself.  This is not without precedent:  the writer Tobias Wolff was originally named Toby.

Matteo Bono (Lampre-Merida) is in the break, and no, I've never heard of him either, though his name sounds familiar for the wrong reason.  Rounding out the group is Pieter Jacobs, who could buy a vowel and follow Venter's lead, riding for Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise, a team so obscure I'm pretty sure it's made-up and this is just some fan who jumped in there.

My fact-checker has alerted me to a glaring error I made earlier.  Froomestrong is not out due to a yeast infection as I'd stated.  (I thought that sounded weird.)  Turns out it's just a chest infection.  This blog regrets the error.  Also, that thing about Jacobus Venter?  Yeah, I made it up.  It's true about Tobias Wolff though.

With 45 km to go, they've hit the most famous climb, La Redoute.  Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) is doing a lot of the work.  Here's an interesting bit of trivia from last year's race:  Tony Martin got a little bit of accidental publicity when, with less than 1 km to go, the Eurosport announcer was so excited describing Dan Martin's winning attack, he called him Tony Martin.  This wouldn't be any big deal if it were Phil Liggett or Paul Sherwin, who are famous for such glitches, but I was surprised to hear it from what's-his-name.  Check out the video if you don't believe me.

Wow!  A Giant-Shimano rider has totally attacked!  He looks really good.  I think it's Warren Barguil, a young Frenchman.  He's a tall guy though, so perhaps it's one of the Dutchmen on this team.  If he makes this stick, and the right riders bridge up, everybody will know his name.  Okay, he's been joined by an Omega Pharma guy, not sure who, and a Trek guy.

The break has completely disintegrated.  I mean, the guys still exist in the material world, but they're not working together anymore other than Venter and Bono.  Bono tells his director, over the race radio, "I'm not saying we're a better  breakaway than the Beatles, but we are more of a breakaway."  No, he didn't really say that.  That was the other, lamer Bono, and of course I paraphrased.

Barguil and the other two have been caught, which is a relief because I don't have to figure out all their names.

With 40K to go, the leading duo has 1:11.  A couple other breakaway-shrapnel guys, Lang and Jacobs I think, are floating halfway between the break and the peloton.  I can't imagine what motivates these guys to keep slogging away instead of letting the peloton catch them, and then curling up into a fetal position and sucking their thumbs like I would do in that situation.

Jan Bakelants (Omega Pharma) takes a stab at attacking but is brought back pretty quickly, before I could even report on it.  He has one of the most badass names in the peloton.  Bakelants ... sounds like what you'd build some giant industrial machine out of in the 1950s in some Iron Curtain country.  (He's Belgian though.)

La Redoute is over, without all the excitement we'd been led to expect.  The Côte des Forges is next.  It's not that long and not that steep, but then these guys have got to be pretty tired after 230 km (142 miles) of racing.

A Garmin rider, with nerdy handlebars, has attacked.  He's also rocking nerdy Micky-Mouse sunglasses.  The peloton needs to catch him pronto to avoid the shame of being bested by such a clownish figure.  God, they're like the bars on my mom's Univega touring bike in the '80s.

Bakelants needs a new bike but where's his team car?  He looks as frustrated as a guy in line at the DMV.  What a shame.  Ah, he's on a new bike now, but will have to chase like a mofo.  (Quick aside:  I once used the word "mofo" at the dinner table, and my dad, a professorial type, said, with an air of delighted curiosity, "What's a mofo?")

The Garmin rider, Alex Howes, has a pretty good gap.  I am left to ruminate on his chances while my Eurosport Internet feed goes to commercials for products with silly slogans like "made from sport."  Here's an ad for Turkey ... the tourist destination, not the meat.  Odd, isn't it, that we see ads for beef, but never turkey?

So, 26 km to go and still not a major move.  Fairly big bunch with a small breakaway with a smallish gap.  Looks like ... Jerome Baugnies of Wanty-Groupe Gobert which is such a silly team name, I'm glad I'm not a radio or TV commentator because I'd burst out laughing.  And it looks like they're caught anyway.

There are two climbs to go.  The Côte de la Roche-aux-Facons is next, about 1.5 km at 8 or 9% if I heard the announcer right.  Andy Schleck attacked on this climb in 2010, the year he won this race, back when he was a bike racer instead of a great, sad human mystery.

Speaking of past winners who doped like crazy, this race has a lot of them.  I've always liked Alexandre Vinokourov--I can't help it--but he obviously doped, and won this in 2005 and 2010.  The perennial doper Alejandro Valverde won here in 2006 and 2008.  The blantantly cheating scumbag Danilo Di Luca doped his way to a victory here in 2007.  And of course we'll never forget how the enthusiastic doper Tyler Hamilton won in ths race in 2003, the only American in history to win this (or any of the monuments).  Frankly, I can’t remember the last time an American contested a major Ardennes classic.  At least in 2003 we had two Americans—Lance and Tyler—bring their A-game, and their A-pharma, to this race.  It seems these days that the American’s can’t be bothered.  (There are five Americans racing today, but all in support roles.)

A flurry of activity as the peloton hits the Côte de la Roche-aux-Facons.  Michal Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma) is right in the mix, and of course Valverde.  Samuel Sanchez, looking weird in the red and black BMC kit (I can only ever picture him in the orange of the dearly departed Euksaltel-Euskadi team), has attacked but is kind of floating around off the front without a clear plan of action.

Only 17 km to go and no huge attacks.  The main group seems to have all the big contenders still.  Some Saxo-Tinkoff guy has attacked and Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) has gone with him.  Ah, and here's a Katusha rider joining them, so Valverde and Philippe Gilbert (BMC) have bridged up, dragging the others with them.  Not sure who the Katusha guy is ... it's not race favorite Joaquim Rodriguez because he dropped out earlier.

The Tinkoff-Saxo rider was Roman Kreuziger and he's still stabbing the field occasionally.  I think I'm the first commentator to use "stab" directly, not as part of the phrase "take a stab," so if it catches on, remember you heard it (well, read it) here first.

Still an oddly large peloton with 13km to go.  With so many climbs, it's kind of remarkable more guys haven't been shed.

The Côte de Saint Nicolas is still to come, in about 5 km.  It's kind of a beast, climbing about 200 meters (656 feet), with pitches of almost 11%.  That should separate the men from the boys, or at least the lubed from the clean.  I hate to say it, but these Ardennes classics aren't as exciting for me because drugs would seem to help more here, with all the climbing.  So far as I know there isn't a syringe payload that will help you on cobblestones.  Maybe that's why the history books of this race is so sullied in comparison.

I wonder if Frank Schleck can do anything without his brother by his side?  Those two do seem awfully emo when deprived of each other's company.  Maybe they should be doing doubles tennis instead.

Mathias Frank (IAM Cycling) launches a pretty sweet attack on the climb.  He looks really solid, no sign of strain.  Oh, and here's a big attack from Daniel Moreno (Katusha).  Somebody else is with him, I can't tell who.  They've got a decent gap, considering they're near the end of this climb.

Valverde launches a move!  Gilbert chases him down instantly.  Dang it, I can't tell who it is with Moreno.  Back in the group some Europcar guy attacks. 

I don't think it's Moreno in the break.  I think it's Giampaolo Caruso.  And with him is Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R La  Mondiale) and they've got about 12 seconds.

Nibali is hammering on the front!  Man, he's just dragging this really long peloton, all strung out in a line.  A Belkin rider has attacked and has a small gap.  It's only 2.2K to go so Caruso and Pozzovivo might just make it ... the last kilo is slightly uphill.

The gap is down to 9 seconds.  If it doesn't open back up, I think these guys may be doomed.  Speaking of doomed I have big fears that my video feed will go away in the final 300 meters.  That's happened too often to be accidental.  I tried to get a backup feed going, from Sporzo, but it wouldn't launch.

Oh, these leaders are really suffering.  There's a sluggishness about them that doesn't bode well for them.

Dan Martin is leading the chase.  Kreuzinger on his wheel.  Man, Martin must either be feeling really great, or riding really stupid, because he's doing a ton of work.

Valverde is drilling it!  Gilbert is fighting to get his wheel.  Dan Martin crashes with 300 meters to go!  Valverde is going for it, but here comes Simon Gerrans!  He's got the win!  I'd never heard of Orica Greenedge until last year but they seem to be one of the best sprinting teams now.  I'll have to see the replay of that sprint because my video was freezing a bunch at the end.  Man, that two-man break very nearly made it.  Here's the super-slo-mo:  Gerrans came right off Valverde's wheel and just blew him away.  Now I've got my cat's ass in my face as she rubs her ear on my PC monitor.  Misha, get out of here!

So Valverde was second, looks like Kwiatoski third.  They're on the podium already with other riders still out on the road, dribbling over the line in large and small clots.

The big favorite, Gilbert, just never really seemed to do anything but a) react, and b) not react.  He'll be pretty bummed with eighth place today.  Caruso hung on for fourth place, which goes to show how close that break was making it.

Gerrans is being interviewed in French, which is fairly impressive because he's Australian.  Says he was feeling lousy with 30km to go but his team helped him out.  (He doesn’t say how.  What, did they give him some big pushes?)  I didn't catch much of the interview because my wife showed up and interrupted, saying, "He's kind of cute!"  She wasn't trying to make me jealous or anything ... more like throwing a conciliatory bone because between the doping and the gaunt physiques of pro cyclists, she's not exactly a fan.

Man, gobs of ads here.  I was hoping to see a super-slo-mo of the podium celebration but I guess this coverage is over!  Yup, Eurosport is on to snooker now.  (Snooker?  Are you kidding me?)

So, pretty exciting race, though I prefer big throw-down attacks to field sprints.  I particularly enjoy watching attacks on climbs, so things are slowed down a bit and you can savor the spectacle of miserable suffering.  And as one of my online correspondents points out, Liège-Bastogne-Liège should end in groups of ones and twos.  What I'd really like to see is a video of Bernard Hinault's amazing win here back in 1980.  I should search YouTube for that....

Thanks for tuning in, if you did, and if you didn't, how on earth are you reading this?

Watching Bike Races

Introduction

It’s not easy being a bike race spectator in the US. In the dark ages we made do with the lousy coverage the major networks carried, and though things got better with OLN (the Outdoor Life Network, otherwise known as the Only Lance Network), now known as Versus, this only helps if you get that channel at home. I do not (I don’t have any channels, for a variety of reasons, one of them being that Comcast was just rated the worst company in America). Normally I don't miss cable TV, except when a big race is on.

This post discusses the challenges of watching big races on the Internet, and compares this to seeing local coverage in person.

Internet race coverage

For relatively timely post-race reporting, sites like dailypeloton.com and cyclingnews.com are very decent. We’ve come a long way since the days when “VeloNews” covered major races a month or more after the fact. By early afternoon, thanks to the time zone difference between the U.S. and Europe, you can get a pretty detailed report with great photos. While you’re at it, you can catch up on all the latest bike gossip, such as the bizarre, wacky, possibly insane Floyd Landis confessions. But of course none of this is any substitute for live video footage.

If you want to watch the action unfold in real time, you should check out www.cyclingfans.com and www.steephill.tv, both of which have numerous web links to live coverage. Why numerous? Well, most of the video feeds either don’t work or are in another language, or both. There’s no perfect strategy here; you just have to try one link after another. Sometimes there’s no English language option, so you’ll finally have an answer to the question (you thought it was rhetorical), “Why did I study a foreign language for five years?

Liège-Bastogne-Liège

This classic one-day race looked promising so I got up good and early and managed to latch on to a nice English-language feed with ninety minutes left in the race. Announcing were Sean Kelly and some British guy. Kelly, though a huge champion in his day (I’ve always thought of him as the Larry Bird of bike racing) is pretty boring as an announcer. During his racing days Kelly was known for answering questions with a head nod during radio interviews, and his manner hasn’t changed much since then. Nonetheless, his understated style—though absurd for a sportscaster—has kind of grown on me, and it’s funny to hear the other guy try to draw him out.

At one point, during an extended lull in the action, the English guy seemed desperate to keep the patter going and really tried to engage Kelly: “So Sean, here’s something nice. Remember that old lady, Coral, who promised to knit us a jumper? Well, she never found the time, but look, she’s mailed us some knit socks! Don't these look smashing?” Kelly replied, “Yes, they’re nice.” The other guy continued, “And they’re even Irish green, isn’t that something?” Kelly said, “Good for winter.” And so on.

Suddenly, with about forty-five minutes to go, the English-language feed got blocked. Incongruously, a picture of a bikini babe replaced the video, and a window popped up saying “This feed blocked at the request of the copyright holder” or some such thing. You always run this risk with the Internet video feeds. Why do they tease us like this? In America they wouldn’t suspend the coverage, they’d just hold it hostage for a credit card number. Maybe that’s no better.

After the English-language feed vanished I couldn't get anything else to work except Russian (or as the site called it “Slavic”). It was a lot better than nothing, though I barely understood any of it (despite two years of Russian language class). The video part of the feed is still from the British, so I could at least read the occasional phrase that flashed on the screen (Leaders, Chasing Group, etc.). The one spoken word I made out that the announcers used a lot was интересно (pronounced “een-tear-ESS-no”), meaning “interesting.” It was weird: two Russian announcers, a Russian and a Khazak rider well off the front in a major bike race, and yet the two announcers could have been discussing wallpaper samples. No excitement in their voices at all, just two men chatting and saying things like “interesting.” Either they’re just not patriotic, or they aren’t that into cycling, or they’re just very soft-spoken people.

After the race when the winner, Alexandre Vinokourov, was interviewed, the show was even funnier because Vino doesn't speak Dutch so he answered the questions in French, which I probably could have understood pretty well except he was mostly drowned out by the Russian translator piped into my feed. So, to summarize: Belgian race, American viewer, British video feed, Russian audio feed, Khazak winner speaking French to (among others) a Russian translator. “And we call it ... the Aristocrats!” (If you haven’t seen “The Aristocrats,” don’t bother trying to understand this joke.)

Tour of California

It’s great having a major stage race right here in my home state. This year my pal Dan came down from Bend so we could ride a couple of the stages, or at least parts of them. The first one we looked at was the stage from Davis to Santa Rosa, that goes over the Oakville Grade and Trinity Grade, on a road that connects the Napa and Sonoma valleys. We rode for a couple of hours before stopping to wait for the racers at a particularly steep and twisty part of Trinity Grade, less than a mile from the summit. A sizeable crowd had turned out to watch, and many were doing their best impersonation of drunken Belgian spectators. They rehearsed their cheering on amateur cyclists like ourselves, and even though I knew they were fake cheers—the equivalent of taking someone’s picture with no film in the camera—I enjoyed them as I rolled up the hill making this movie:

Following this, Dan and I parked our bikes and stood around in a patch of poison oak, in the freezing rain, for the next hour and a half, growing incrementally tired of the exaggerated antics of the drunken spectators, ultimately cursing the racers for not making better time. I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering and had to do jumping jacks to keep from expiring entirely. Countless race vehicles and cops would drive by, getting cheered wildly as we mistakenly thought they had something to do with the racers finally arriving. But each time—nothing. Finally, when my brain was so sodden and cold I’d all but forgotten what we were doing there, the racers finally arrived. Here is the main bunch:

Almost seven minutes later, the race leader, Mark Cavendish, rolled by just ahead of another large group. I recognized him immediately, but was puzzled by his standard team jersey instead of the race leader’s jersey. Finally I figured it out: he’s wearing a vest over it.

As race spectating goes, this was pretty good, discomfort aside. The trouble is, a tough climb like Trinity Grade barely fazes these guys, and they just go by too fast. If you really want to watch them suffer, you have to find something a lot longer and steeper, or a multi-lap deal like the Nevada City Criterium. Plus, since we couldn’t be in two places at once, we couldn’t watch the finish and thus didn’t learn who won until that night, when we checked out the results online.

The next day, a few more friends joined us as we took Bart to San Francisco and rode down Highway 1 along the coast for a couple dozen miles, ahead of the racers on the Stage 3 route, then heading inland to ride up Tunitas Creek Road, otherwise known as Kings Mountain. It’s about a ten mile climb, and again the weather was cold and damp (though at least we weren’t rained on). The top of the climb was absolute pandemonium, with spectators thicker than flies on road rash:

We saw the blur of racers go by, descended, once again freezing, to a second vantage point for another quick look, then headed back to the coast where we hammered south on Highway 1 a bunch more. Seventy-five miles into the ride, with twenty-five to go to Santa Cruz, we stopped at a convenience store for Cokes and such. When Dan and I came out, our pal Mark had spotted a roadside diner and said, “Conceptually, there’s no reason we couldn’t get a cheeseburger here.” He considered it for a moment, then went on, “Screw it, I’m getting a cheeseburger. You wanna cheeseburger [pointing at me]? You wanna cheeseburger [pointing at Dan]?” Dan and I each twirled an index finger in the air and said, “Three orange whips!” (If you don’t remember or haven’t seen “The Blues Brothers,” don’t bother trying to understand this.) To our great delight, the diner was showing the race on their big TV over the bar, which is how we came this close to getting to see the finish.

It was a real nail-biter: Levi Leipheimer, Dave Zabriskie, and Michael Rogers were in a breakaway only about twenty seconds ahead of the charging peloton, with about a mile to go. It seemed like couldn’t get much better than this: burgers, fries, a warm place to sit after a bunch of riding, and race coverage on the telly. But suddenly, the Versus announcer, Phil Liggett, was saying something about us needing to switch to the Versus online coverage. And then—Bam! Literally less than a mile to go, and the coverage stopped. It was 4:00, see, when some stupid pre-game hockey show was scheduled to run, and Versus made no effort to accommodate the late finish of the race. God forbid the hockey fans should miss five minutes of their show so we could see the final result of four and a half hours of bike racing. Nice job, Versus. My chances of ever paying for your channel have just sunk to zero.

Giro d’Italia

The trouble with the Tour of California and the Giro d’Italia running concurrently is that it’s hard to stay on top of both. When the American race ended, I was able to better focus on the Italian one. Fortunately, the first truly epic day wasn’t until Stage 7, when the racers tackled the unholy combination of dirt roads and rain: mud wrestling on bikes, basically. I missed this one live, but watched the last fifty or so minutes later in ten-minute installments, thanks to steephill.tv and their handy video archives.

The next stage I watched live was the penultimate race, over the mythic Passo di Gavia. This time poor weather temporarily halted the video feed for everybody, worldwide. During this period the footage turned to the spectators atop the high pass, shivering in the cold. (After Trinity Grade, I could begin to relate to their experience.) There was so much snow the road had to be plowed for the racers , so they road alongside six-foot walls of snow on either side. Being terrified of copyright laws, I cannot furnish photos on this blog, but you can see some nice ones here and here and here.

Happily, the video eventually returned, and I got to watch the action on the Gavia with the announcing of Sean Kelly and the British bloke. I’m really becoming rather fond of Kelly’s soft-spoken reticence. As Ivan Basso, the new race leader, reached the summit, an American announcer would have tried to inject as much drama as possible by saying, “And here he is, the leader of the Tour of Italy, cresting the highest summit of the entire three week race!” or some such. Kelly, after pausing to watch Basso roll by, simply said, “And here’s Basso, all jacketed up.” Something so calm, cozy even, about this simple description.

Perhaps my video hosts were feeling a bit punch-drunk on the last day as they announced the time trial event. The Brit watched one rider cross the finish line and said, “Quite a good ride from so-and-so, especially as he’s got no form to speak of.” When Vladimir Karpets, a 6’3” Russian rider, overshot a corner and had to come to a stop, the Brit said, “Not a great spot of bike handling there,” to which Kelly replied, “He’s so far from the ground, he’s probably scared.” As tall rider myself, I winced.

But this was nothing compared to their assessment of the Frenchman Thomas Voeckler. “A bit of a loose cannon, isn’t he Sean?”the Brit asked. Kelly replied, “Well, he’s impetuous, and he’s the kind of rider who, when he’s in the thick of it, you can’t talk to. Some riders are like that—you can talk to them until they’re in a move, and then they do their own thing. Usually it’s not very bright, but it can work out, if other riders are caught napping, so it’s not always such a bad thing. Besides, other riders you can talk to, who are always aware of everything and don’t make mistakes, well, so often they’re so aware they don’t do anything, and when you tell them it’s time to ride, they’ve always got some problem.” I felt pegged. I've often missed opportunities in races by paying too much attention to my own cautionary impulses.

Other than that, the final stage coverage was low-key, like the pleasant passive entertainment of a baseball game. When the final rider, race leader Ivan Basso, took the start ramp, there was no fanfare from the announcers. “Here is Basso,” the Brit intoned, “all in pink except for the overshoes and the mitts.”